What you should know about beer market in China

When this is the time for the beer festival, the beer city is always full of people music coming from dins of drums and trumpets. The environment is very impressive because you can see spectacular fireworks shows on the sea but also a great parade of military bands, ethnic tropes. The landscape is very colourful with balloons and festooned vehicles. Tourists can enjoy beers and many brands of the country.

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Market Trends About Beer

The Chinese market has always been a positive one for beer producers because, Chinese people really enjoy this drink. However, during these last years, we can notice a shift in Chinese consumers’ taste. They tend to appreciate more “macro” beers, in other words, the ones from mass production such as Budweiser to more premium and craft flavours. To support this statement, we can take for example the sales in volumes of cheaper Chinese beers which fell. Nonetheless, the demand of premium beer is swelling. The Chinese market represents a good place for foreign craft brewers because it offers a lot of opportunities.

The Chinese market can take benefit of the growing middle who can spend more and more money in pleasure activities including beer festival. These millennials and the middle class feed the craft beer market. In general , Chinese people are ready to spend more money in premium products such as alcohol. Even though, the comprehensive market of alcohol decreased, the overall value of Chinese beer sales has actually risen. This can be explained by the fact that millennium and middle-class people are more and more attract by local brands.

The Chinese interest for craft beer is young. The market has been led by foreigners living and working abroad. As a consequence, they are a good target for craft brewers first entering the Chinese market. Actually, it is first the expatriates that introduced the craft beer to friends and then it becomes popular among locals and especially amid younger generations who are looking for trendy and high quality products.

If you want to start un craft beer business, you need to consider some challenges that you might face. First of all, craft beers have to be served as fresh as possible in other to keep real flavour. Consequently, if you want to export your beer you need to think about a way to conserve them well. You need to be able to pay for shipping costs of long-distance and also to be prepared to long distances , as well as the extended shipping time including the lack of proper storage facilities.

The Most Famous Beer Festival in China

Qingdao beer festival is the most famous and largest one in China. This is a good place where you can enjoy good music, tourists and traditional food. The area is full of huge tent and, of course, beer, a lot of beers. Qingdao International Beer Festival has been created in 1991 and since then the crowds have steadily increased.

During this event you can find obviously the famous beer Tsingtao and other foreign brands like Budweiser and Carlsberg set up their own tent.This festival is quite recent, but the beer tradition is old of 100 years old. Indeed, throughout the two-world wars, foreign occupation and civil war, the brewery changes hands many times. In 1949, Tsingtao was nationalized but besides all the difficulties including purges , starvation , displacement that came with the Cultural revolution, they never stopped producing beers.

In this festival there always has been a huge amount of sausage, dumplings, grilled skewers of spiced meat and squid. Nowadays, this event takes benefit from its national recognition. It gathers tourism, culture , sport and it also represents a good opportunity to promote the city. Concerning the festival itself, it starts with the opening ceremony in the town. Then it is followed by 16 days of beer tasting but also evening entertainment and drinking competitions. It ends with the final ceremony from the second week end of August.Tsingtao is now the most well-known Chinese beer in the world. However, the company is now held by Japanese investors and has to face a fierce competition in the country. Actually Tsingtao has only 17% share of the market in China.

How an you get in this business ?

If you want to start un craft beer business, you need to consider some challenges that you might face. First of all, craft beers have to be served as fresh as possible in other to keep real flavour. Consequently, if you want to export your beer you need to think about a way to conserve them well. You need to be able to pay for shipping costs of long-distance and also to be prepared to long distances , as well as the extended shipping time including the lack of proper storage facilities.

Beer festival provides very good opportunities to develop your beer brands. However because the competition is very fierce , you need to make a good study of the market and who you wan to target. This is also necessary to think about production costs and distribution before investing. Indeed it is important to be able to support important costs. Moreover, because beer festival are a special event which means that they are punctual, you need to advertise your product as much as possible. Indeed, the more people know you brand before the event, the more they will be able to choose your brand.

Some routes to enter in this big market:

E-Commerce: China is the world largest e-commerce country. Chinese like purchase online, with its more than 900 million internet users. Top 3 biggest e-commerce platforms are: Tmall, JD.com and Taobao. So if you want to realize some sales in China, you have to integrate those e-commerce platforms.

Think about your Online Reputation: Chinese customers will never buy your beer, if they know that your products have a bad reputation. so paid attention, don’t let bad comment spread online. You have to work with a local digital marketing able to take care of your reputation and erase all bad comments about you.

Chinese Social media: become viral, make the buzz on Chinese social media. Do you want to increase your traffic, get a big exposure???The solution:Wechat and Weibo , these two social network are incredible. Wechat through its 900 million active users and weibo with 650 millions active users, can make you reach the top. be presence online, create a rich and authentic content, be interactive with your followers.

Collaborate with KOLs: Actually, kols have a big influence on Chinese customers decisions. They are able to put you up or down just through one post or comments. You really have to considerate work with them for increase your presence and get more traffic in China. You have to choose the right kol who can become the ambassador of your beer.

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